


Hallelujah

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Dubious Consent, F/M, Rape/Non-con References, Sadstuck, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:03:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Eridan Ampora, and the biggest lie you've ever told yourself is that she actually loves you back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> This is a terribly sad thing that I've done. Set in an Alternian armystuck AU of some sort.
> 
> It's inspired by the song "Hallelujah," originally by Jeff Buckley and covered by Michael Henry & Justin Robinett, as well as the story of David and Bathsheba. (And I mainly got the idea because of a YouTube video by Miyotora, which featured her lovely Eridan/Feferi drawings set to this music).

(~)

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and biggest lie you’ve ever told to yourself is that the empress Feferi Peixes was ever just your moirail.

You’re desperately flushed red for her, have been since the two of you were barefoot children with silly, foolish dreams, and still are now, as adults in her palace. Now she is the empress of the Alternian kingdom, and you serve as the first General to her Army. You live to be able to kneel at her feet and please her. You would die fighting in War for her. In a heartbeat.

She’s enormously beautiful, the queen of your world, just as gracious as she can be stubborn, with big, round eyes and a strident voice that puts peace in the souls of the people, and lights a fire in your heart.

She doesn’t love you back. She’s always been pale for you, always caring and kissing you gently and watching after you as you grow up alongside her, but nothing more, and it hurts. It pains you every day to watch her love another.

Sollux is a soldier in the army, held up in high honor as one of your strongest fighters from the first War, but really nothing but a classless low blood to you. Sometimes he comes around the palace for a visit, and you notice the way that Feferi’s always battered her lashes at him, like he’s special and deserves some kind of fucking attention. You notice the way that he smirks and brushes up against her shoulder, tangling their hands together by her side, the way she blushes then and gives him her neck, the way he whispers something in her ear and even from across the room, you can hear the seething hisses of his goddamn lisp.

You hate him, and at first you couldn’t tell if it was in a black way or an I-just-want-you-to-die kind of way, but lately you’ve seriously been leaning towards the latter.

You notice the way that he leaves in the morning, all crack ‘a dawn when the sky is dark teal and pink with the corners of the sun crawling up from the horizon line. You probably shouldn’t be awake to catch him walking out, but you never sleep, you haven’t been able to ever since the first War. You watch him, lanky figure skirting through the courtyard below, shirttails crooked and jet black hair a mess as he adjusts his pants and sneaks out of the palace the back way, right out of the window of Feferi’s respiteblock. And you know that when you see Feferi later on in the morning, her face practically glowing, pretty lashes fanned about freckled cheeks, otherwise clean skin marked with deep, dark dashes of tyrian, it’s because of him. When she dances around the kitchen and gives you an excited, “Good morning, Captain!” as she tips your hat and gives you a friendly kiss on the cheek, you know that he’s made love to her, warmed her heart and gotten closer to her than you could’ve ever dreamed, and you resent the fuck out of him for it, bitterness pricks at your entire being and constricts you in your throat until you can’t breathe right.

You want nothing more than her world to be rid of him.

The second War happens and the men are called off; the rebellion that’s risen against Feferi’s kingdom will soon be put to death, by yours truly, as you are first in command as General, and Sollux, of course, is drafted as a fighter, walking around with the false-headed reputation of _the big hero_ from the last War.

You bring him before you, and it’s always been established that he doesn’t care for you much. He’s got serious issues with figures of authority and superior royalty much like yourself. But he doesn’t hate you. He’s apathetic to you at best, regards you like you’re irrelevant and it makes your blood cringe and boil. He doesn’t know that you’re brutally jealous, he probably doesn’t even know that you know about him and your princess, the ignorant prick. You hate him more than you’ve ever hated anyone and your insides twist about it.

When you call him in he stares at you, raised brow and arms crossed and a roll of his bicolored eyes. Says, “Yeth, Captain?” all smug like you’re wasting his time, and it makes you want to gut his arrogant ass like a fish.

So you tell him that he’s being promoted.

“Just wanted ‘a tell you that you’re on the front lines now, Sol,” you announce, baring your teeth.

His brow furrows slightly.

“Oh,” he says, hollowly.

“You’ve been in the ranks for quite some time now, an’ it’d be foolish a’ me not to notice that you’re one a’ the most resilient army men we got,” you tell him, faux-boosting his ego, noting the many medals that he _brandishes_ on his commoner’s uniform. “You’d do us the better service by leadin’ the men out on the battlefield,” you add. “So I’m puttin’ you at the front lines, front and center. Really you’ll do us the both of us a better service this way, I hope you understand.”

You see Sollux swallow, hard, and for a moment the pain that comes from his eyes is so tangible to you that you can taste it, and you like it.

Then his expression just goes blank, and he nods.

“Thankth,” he says, flat and cold.

He tips his hat at you. He knows that you just sent him his death wish.

The following day the sky is red and black as your fleet attacks the rebel army. You’re on your steed a ways back at the end of the army, planning to watch the hard work unfold before you enter, and when you see the front lines charge you have to admit that you cringe just once at the sight of his mustard yellow blood exploding and splattering into the air.

But when your steed treads over what must be left of his corpse, you think nothing of it; you think nothing of the lives that have to be sacrificed in order for you to win this War for her, in order for you to do your loyal duties and serve your princess, your beautiful queen, your only love.

(~)

Feferi doesn’t know that Captor is dead yet.

You come back to the palace at the end of the War, and when she sees you, she’s thin, her eyes are doused in shadows, and she looks practically desperate. She runs towards you, sweeps her arms around you and plants kisses to your cheek that melt you. You wrap your hands around her supple waist and hold her, and your heart breaks because for a moment you know deep down that you’ve hurt her so badly but what you’ve done, you know that she’s just embracing you the way that she would her lover, but selfishly, you tell yourself that it was worth it. He was just a formality, just a piece of mustardblooded filth that was getting in the way of you having her.

You did what you had to do.

“I’m _so_ glad you made it back,” she says in a whisper, shakily.

You hold her tighter, inhale the sweet smell of her.

That’s all you wanted to hear.

She pulls back and adjusts your uniform for you, nitpicky and finicky, like she always used to, and talks on an on excitedly about how things have gone in the kingdom. She stares up into your eyes, faint, heavy, black hair tumbling down her shoulders, grey light from the stain glass windows falling on her beautiful face, highlighting its gorgeous angles in the best ways you’ve ever seen.

“You were awfully quiet about the casualties numbers in your reports,” she says now, worriedly, but also with a sternness that quickly reminds you of her authority. “Do you know who we’ve lost yet? Have you sent out your apologies, arranged the placements of the bodies?”

You gulp, but she doesn’t notice it. You press a kiss to the top of her head, smooth her hair, brush a thumb across her cheek as she waits for your answer and pouts expectantly.

“All in due time, princess,” you say.

(~)

Someone else tells her that Sollux is dead.

When your princess hears the news, she falls and weeps and screams for him to come back to her, you can hear it from your quarters and it shatters you like you never even believed it could.

She’d hate you if she knew why you did what you did, and that’s why you can never tell her. You shudder as you finish writing out your condolences, block out the sounds of her sobbing in the empty, hallow halls.

You’re taking this to your grave.

(~)

She’s been depressed since she found out. She’s still doing her duties as empress, standing up strong and powerful before the people, telling them of the crushed rebellion and giving a powerful word about the worth of their lost loved ones, but you get to see her when she’s in the safety of the palace, when she lets her broken, fuchsia heart bleed all over the marble floors.

She weeps every night, sometimes whispering his name throughout the darkness of her dreams, but awake, she’s begun to cling to you now, the only man in her life who truly answers her every beck and call, you _live_ to serve her with every fiber of your being. You get to touch her gently at nights, run your hands through her hair and tell her sweet nothings. You’re the only man who gets to see her be weak, and that’s how you know she trusts you. When she kisses you one night outside of her respiteblock, a different, desperate sort of kiss, clinging to your lips like she needs you to breathe, you know you have your hook in her, and the _victory_ of that breaks its way through you and swells your childish heart with pride.

She finally wants you, and you’ll go to the ends of Alternia to have her.

One night, you ascend the stairs to her private rooftop for a breath of fresh air, a view of the world in which you’ve conquered, and cross the way, you see her bathing. Her body’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but not since you were kids. As an adult, her nakedness is stark and breathtaking, wet hair and soap all over her, toes peeking out from under the water, freckles fluttered all across the curves of her breasts.

You stop, stuck, your desire and lust and perversion unable to part from her wet body.

She turns over her shoulder, sees you staring, gazes at you heavy-lidded, and doesn’t look alarmed at all.

She invites you to come near, and when you are close, she reaches out to you and pulls on your hands. You kiss both of her hands feverishly and shuck off your uniform, climbing into the bath with her.

She must know what you want.

So you take her. _Finally_ you groan and lift her legs and fuck her desperately, half-underwater. As you enter her over and over, she fills your ears with choked up music and you notice the stained-red glass of wine and the near-empty bottle at the foot of the bath, but you ignore the twinge of guilt that riddles your body because _god,_ she feels so _good_ , tense and shaking and wrapped around you, and everything is hot and she _clings_ to you, wet and trembling in desperation. She cries and mutters things into your jet black hair as her claws dig into your scalp and yank at your roots, and you buck up into her deep and quick and eager, taking it all in, taking all of her in. Once you swear and _know_ that you catch Sollux’s name tumbling in broken whimpers from her lips, but if that jabs a painful stake right through of the core of your heart, you don’t show it.

She’s a ghost of who she once was, after that.

She wanders around the palace with you emptily, becoming paler and quieter each day. Each night you try and comfort her, but as she holds onto you tight while you rock her wooden bedframe, she cries softly and trembles and whispers words like _please, Eridan,_ and _stop_. Some nights you freeze up and go limp, leave her room and slam the door and wait sleeplessly in the dark until the morning, when she’ll greet you with a cold, weak, practiced smile, and you’ll embrace her and start things all over again. But other nights, you pretend not to hear it because _you love her_ , you want it to be okay _so badly_ because you love her, and you’re hurting her, but that hurts you too much to admit.

She fades away from you more and more, loses herself because of what you so selfishly take, but you’re so eager to have just a piece of her that you’ll accept this empty shell of her.

Your name is Eridan Ampora, and the biggest lie you’ve ever told yourself is that when Feferi cries out for you, claws at your back while you desperately fail to try and heal her, that it’s because she actually loves you back.


End file.
